Handmade cards and other crafts, templates & tips

Today I'm going to show you how to make these cute pumpkins 

1 - Cut a circle of your chosen fabric and stitch it all the way around as shown in this photo.

2 - Put some soft filling in the middle of your circle and pull the ends of the thread to close it like this.

3 - Choose a strong thread in a matching or contrasting colour and tie a knot at the end. Insert the threaded needle from the front to the back of your pumpkin.

4 - Stitch all the way around to form the petals always making sure you keep the thread under tension. You should get something like this.

5 - Finish the middle of your pumpkin using a button or any other embellishment of your choice.

Your little pumpkin is ready to be used.

I've been having fun making lots of felt flowers that I plan to use in some future projects. I made these last week without using any template and I quite like the result. Here are the step by step instructions:

1- Draw and cut a circle out of felt or fabric.

2 - Find the centre of the circle and then draw some straight lines that will serve as guides for cutting the petals. Cut along these lines but stop short of the centre of the circle

3 - With a small pair of scissors cut the edges of the petals giving them a slightly curved shape. To do this hold your circle between your fingers and cut only the right side of the petal. Keep going around the circle until you've done all petals. This is what you should have.

4 - Turn it around, hold it again between your fingers and do the same as above. When you finish check your petals to see if they need a little more cutting to make them as round as possible.

That's it, now you just need to do the centre of the flower using another smaller circle of felt in a contrasting or matching colour, a button, beads, etc. These flowers can then be used in cardmaking, scrapbook pages, on hair clips, headbands, etc.

This is my secong tutorial in the series of projects using circles of fabric. This time I'm going to show you how to make a flower.

1 - After you have cut your circles pick up each one and fold it in half.

2 - Fold in half again to get a triangle as shown in the photo.

3 - Stitch all the way around the wider part of your triangle like this to form your first petal.

4 - Do the same with the other circles of fabric you've cut threading them all together to make a chain.

5 - Carefully, pull the end of the thread to gather all the "petals" as you can see in this picture. Join both ends of the chain with a stitch or two to hold in place. Do the middle of the flower by using, for example, a fabric yo-yo as I did here.

Your flower is done and ready to be used.

Over the next few days I'll be posting some tutorials on what you can do using circles of fabric, this is the first of the series and I'm going to show you how to make yo-yos. These can then be used in a variety of projects. For example, you can use them to make necklaces, bags (by sewing lots of yo-yos together), as embellishments for hair clips and headbands, as brooches, etc.

Let's start:

1 - Choose your fabric and cut the number of circles you need for your project. As template I used my Fiskars Circles plate.

2 - Turn the fabric so the right side is facing down and stitch all the way around as you can see in this photo. The length of your stitches will make the yo-yo more or less frilly. The closer the stitches are the more frilly it will be.

3 - When you finish the step above, pull the end of the thread  to make the circle sort of "curl" up as shown in this photo.

4 - Flatten it a little and then cover the hole in the middle by sewing a button or any other embellishment of your choice. Click here to see my finished yo-yo.

I hope you enjoy this project and don't forget that I'll be posting some more using circles of fabric.

There was some interest in the template I used to make the felt crown appliques I used in some of my most recent cards so here it is for you to download, just click here

I made some new cards using a lovely dress template I found on the Internet. To have a look at the cards click here and to download the template click here.

I've been making cards in preparation for an upcoming Car Boot Sale and Summer Fair at my son's school and these are my latest ones. I'm loving making cards using fabric but specially felt, it's such a good and versatile material to work with. To see my cards click here. I particularly like the male shaker cards I made over the week end. Usually I have trouble coming up with ideas for cards for men and I think these are not too bad. I used my Citrus Colossal Paper Pack which I bought on sale at The Range for £2.99. At Hobbycraft this very same pack is being sold at £4.99!!

For the cupcakes I used this template and for the Hello Kitty and Miffy cards I used this one. Hope you like them. I'll be posting more templates soon.

Last but not least, a very big thank you to everyone who visits my blog .